Israeli beer company to consumers: 'Be thankful you're a man, and have yourself a drink'
Organizations for gender equality call for the boycott of Israeli companies that feature chauvinist ads and commercials, but the public uproar actually generates interest in these products and ultimately increases their sales.
Every year on International Women’s Day, the Women’s International Zionist Organization releases its "Badge of Shame for the Most Sexist Advertisers," a listing of the five most offensive ads to women that appeared in the preceding year. This year’s list in February included such iconic Israeli brands as Castro Clothing and Elite’s Turkish Coffee.
“Their advertisements follow an offensive, old-school approach to advertising, which claims that a woman’s body is a tool that can be used to push products and a means to satisfy men,” the judges said, explaining their choice of one particular product on the list [Carolina Lemke eyewear].
As for the brands themselves, they are hardly upset by these kinds of critiques in the media outlets and social networks.
Recently, the Internet was up in arms over a commercial for Goldstar, a popular local beer with a long history of commercials that malign and ridicule women. The latest example features three women who enter a pub, only to find that there are exactly three seats left. The problem is that one of the seats is at the corner of the bar, and an old superstition says that any woman who sits in the corner seat will not get married for seven years. This leads into a violent grotesque race between the women so as not to get stuck with that unlucky seat. At the end, a man sits down rather nonchalantly in the same corner stool and orders a drink. The slogan used by Goldstar for the past 15 years is, “Be thankful you’re a man, and have yourself a drink.”
